What Is an LIV Accredited Family Law Specialist?
An LIV Accredited Family Law Specialist is a lawyer who has passed the Law Institute of Victoria’s specialist accreditation assessment in family law. It is the difference between a practice describing itself as specialist and a lawyer being examined on it by somebody else.
The bar sits high before a lawyer can sit the assessment at all. Five years of full-time practice since admission, and substantial family law work in each of the three years immediately beforehand. That rules out anyone who has recently moved into the area.
The assessment itself is three separate examinations, weighted equally. A take-home assignment that includes drafting a letter of advice and court documents. A written exam running three and a half hours. And a simulated client interview, assessed as it happens. All three have to be passed on their own, so a strong interview cannot carry a weak exam, and failing to properly identify the ethical issues in a component is an automatic fail of it.
It is also not a certificate a lawyer keeps for good. Accreditation must be renewed every three years, with twelve hours of professional development a year, and eight of those hours in family law specifically.
At Village Family Lawyers, Bryn Stevens and Anna Bulner are both LIV Accredited Family Law Specialists.
A lawyer without accreditation is not the wrong choice. Many excellent family lawyers have not sat it, and the right person for your matter may be someone whose particular experience fits your situation more closely. But when you are comparing practices and have no other way to tell them apart, accreditation is the one claim the Law Institute has assessed rather than the practice making it.
Can Your Separation Be Resolved Without Going to Court?
Often, yes. Approximately 90% of the matters Village Family Lawyers supports through family law mediation resolve without court proceedings, and the practice has worked this way from its Mount Eliza and Malvern offices since 2019.
What sits underneath a figure like that is preparation. A practice built around resolution assembles the financial picture before proposals start moving, prepares clients properly for mediation rather than sending them in cold, and recognises when a process has stalled. Our guide on how to prepare for family law mediation sets out what that involves.
Resolution outside court is not always available, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. Sometimes the other party will not engage, and proceedings become the only way to impose a timetable. That is why the question worth asking any practice is not whether it avoids court, but what it does when the other side stops cooperating.
Privacy is part of this too. Court proceedings carry a degree of public exposure that a negotiated resolution does not, so for anyone whose situation is sensitive, the pathway chosen at the start shapes how discreet the process stays.
Which Family Lawyer Is Right for Your Type of Matter?
When someone first comes to Village Family Lawyers, part of that early conversation is working out who should look after them.
Every lawyer here practises family law and nothing else, and all of them are experienced across the full range of it. Any one of them would do a good job of your matter. The question is less about ability than about fit, because what you are dealing with sometimes points clearly towards one person, and it is worth saying so at the start rather than leaving it to chance.
Bryn Stevens, an LIV Accredited Family Law Specialist, spends a good deal of his time drafting and advising on financial agreements and on matters that end up in litigation. Anna Bulner, also an LIV Accredited Family Law Specialist, takes on complex parenting and property matters and has appeared across several jurisdictions. Shirin Motamedi does a lot of work on complex property, business structures and unusual assets, including cryptocurrency, which arises more often in Melbourne’s south-east than most people expect. Maria Stipic works extensively on complex parenting matters and represents clients at mediation and family dispute resolution, as does Ruby Leonard.
None of that means a lawyer only ever works in one area. Those are simply where each of them has spent the most time, and you can read more about all of them on the team page.
Files are also not handled in isolation here. The team works collaboratively, so the thinking on a difficult question is rarely one person’s alone, and if something in your situation sits outside your lawyer’s usual ground, the experience of the rest of the team is already in the room. Where a matter involves a company, a trust or an asset that is hard to value, The Village Circle brings in accountants, valuers and financial specialists to work alongside the legal advice.
When Should You Speak to a Family Lawyer?
Earlier than most people do. You do not need to have decided anything, and getting advice does not commit you to a course of action or to a particular firm.
There are a few points where a conversation is particularly worth having:
- Soon after separating, because the date of separation can matter later and informal arrangements made early can be difficult to unwind.
- Before agreeing to anything significant, including moving out, transferring money between accounts, or signing a document the other party has prepared.
- Before a divorce application, since divorce ends the marriage but does not resolve property or parenting, and time limits apply to property claims.
- When arrangements for the children are not working, rather than after months of escalating conflict.
- If you are being pressed to decide quickly, which is usually the point at which advice is most valuable and least likely to be sought.
Speaking to someone early tends to narrow the problem. It is far easier to set something up properly than to undo it afterwards.
What Should You Ask on the First Call, and What Happens at a First Consultation?
The first conversation is the most useful information you will get, and a short discovery call with Village Family Lawyers is free. Five questions are worth asking every time:
- What is my legal position, in plain terms? You are not asking for advice on the spot. You are testing whether this person can make a complicated situation comprehensible.
- Who would actually handle my matter, and what do they usually work on?
- How are your fees structured, and what drives the cost up? Family law costs are typically a combination of time-based fees and disbursements such as valuations, barristers or court filing, and the biggest driver is usually how much the other side disputes.
- How is my privacy protected?
- What happens if the other side will not engage?
An initial consultation at Village Family Lawyers runs for about 90 minutes, in person at Mount Eliza or Malvern, or online. It covers where you stand legally, the options realistically open to you, and a recommended next step, so you leave with a clearer picture rather than a longer list of questions.
Listen to how the answers are given as much as to what they contain. You may be working with this person for a year or more, during a period when you are not at your best.
Choosing a Family Lawyer on the Mornington Peninsula
If you live on the Peninsula, there is a practical question underneath the legal one, which is how much of this will require travelling to Melbourne. Most of it does not.
Family law in Australia is federal, so the law is the same wherever your lawyer sits, and most of a matter happens through correspondence, conferences and mediation rather than in a courtroom. Court applications in Victoria are filed with the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, which has registries in Melbourne and Dandenong, but many matters never reach that stage.
Village Family Lawyers works with clients across Mount Eliza, Mornington, Mount Martha, Frankston and the wider Peninsula from its Mount Eliza office, and across Melbourne’s inner south-east from Malvern. A local lawyer matters less for the law than for the practical business of sitting in a room with someone when a decision is hard.
